Three Sundays
by VampirePam
Summary: Matt keeps stealing flowers out of his neighbor Foggy's garden on the way to the cemetery; Foggy keeps telling him they'd better be for someone pretty; now they're both in a graveyard and Matt has some explaining to do.
1. Daisies

The first flowers he stole were an act of desperation. Matt knew it was a sin, recognized the irony, but it was Easter Sunday, and he couldn't bear the thought of his father thinking his only son had someplace better to be.

He was just telling himself that he'd replace them, leave money, _s omething_ , when all his mental efforts were rendered meaningless by the owner of the flowers walking right up to him, with a casual, "Hey, man, how's it going?"

"I'm sorry," Matt mumbled to his shoelaces. "You must be thinking I'm the worst neighbor since that guy from _Rear Window_."

"You got something hidden in that Volvo of yours I should know about?" He could feel the guy smiling. Why the hell was he _smiling_? " If so, don't sweat it - I just passed the bar last week. Shit hits the fan, I'm on call for your defense."

"Look, I can pay you for them." Matt scrambled in his pocket for the few dollars he hoped were still in there from the laundromat. It wasn't until later that he processed the strange coincidence of them both being new lawyers. "I...I was going to pay you for them. I was just running so late and..."

"Hey," the man stilled his motion with a calm hand, "Seriously, no worries, okay?l Flowers are meant to be shared! Least that's what my mom always says. And something tells me you need them a lot more than I do today."

"Tell you what, you give me your name and a promise to make it up to me, and we'll call it square. Deal?"

He nodded hurriedly, letting out a breath. "Thanks. I'm Matt. Matt Murdock."

"Well, it's nice to be your florist today, Matt Murdock." His new friend grasped his hand firmly, before letting it go again. "I'm Foggy Nelson. And all I've got to say is for _my_ daisies, she'd better be really pretty."

"Oh, he's not..." Matt trailed off. He didn't discuss his father with anyone, even though something in Foggy's voice had him thinking he almost could.

"He?" Something in Foggy's tone shifted slightly. "Hey, uh, that's cool, man. You tell him Foggy says to change their water every couple of days."

On impulse, Matt smiled. "Yeah," he said, "I'll do that. Thanks again."


	2. Roses

The second time was a few weeks later, another Sunday afternoon - though this time Matt wasn't rushing anywhere. If anything, he appreciated the opportunity to (quite literally) stop and smell the roses. Far more pleasant than feeling the ache of another year's passing without his father.

"Uh-oh," came a familiar voice from behind the lilacs. Smiling again, teasing even. "In hot water again? For your sake, we've got to stop meeting like this."

"Nothing like that, I promise." Matt tweaked his expression into what he hoped was a decent facsimile of a smile. "It's...an anniversary, I guess."

"You guess?" A waft of rose, the snap of breaking stems: Foggy was making him a bouquet. "Aren't you, I don't know, supposed to _know_ when you've got one of those?"

A laugh escaped Matt's lips."When you put it that way..." This time, the smile came easily.

"Here, tell you what..." Foggy vanished without another word. Matt froze, feeling helpless for only a few seconds until his new friend reappeared and thrust a fragrant mess of stems into his hands.

"They tend to pack more of a punch when they don't scream STOLEN. The ribbon kinda sells it."

Matt buried his face in the blooms - beneath the sweetness of the petals, there was the tang of soil and minerals, the freshness of a recent rain. He was swept away by the natural wonder of them. Death, decay, neglect: these were his day to day in the cramped legal aid office. Nothing that brimmed with such _vitality._

"You, uh, really like flowers, huh?" Foggy's voice was amused, but not mocking. Matt's cheeks suffused with heat. Then it slipped out.

"I used to." His fingers played nervously with the ribbon as he muttered, "That is, before..."

The slight uptick in Foggy's heartbeat implied an understanding. Matt cursed inwardly. He tried not to talk about the accident - it always brought pleasant conversation to a screeching halt. And this had been such a pleasant conversation...

Something light and soft brushed against his left ear. As Matt reached up to investigate, Foggy explained, "Lilacs, though I suppose you can smell that already. So you can have a bit of spring left when you've given him the roses. Maybe bring back some of those happy memories."

Matt removed the lilac sprig and twirled it with his unoccupied hand. The scent tugged at the corners of his mouth and his heartstrings. "Our street was lined with these. They always bloomed just before my mother's birthday: her favorite."

"Mine always preferred herbs to flowers," Foggy offered. His voice lightened, a pronounced Brooklyn accent coming through. "What use are gardenias, I'd like to know? Can't put them in a stew or on a roast. Give me my rosemary any day!"

"And did she make good stew, your mother?" Matt was relieved to be talking about Foggy's past instead of his own.

"The best." Pride radiated throughout Foggy's voice. "Still does! You ever find yourself with an empty belly on a Sunday evening, just come down to Winslow St. I guarantee you won't be eating again for a month."

For a moment, the scene flickered around him - a tantalizing mirage. The sounds of clanking plates and low laughter, smells of warm, homey food, taste of freshly baked rolls on his tongue...the gut punch of _family._

"Maybe some other Sunday," Matt demurred. Much more of this and he'd crack and tell Foggy the truth; anger he could stand, but Foggy clearly wasn't the type. Pity was more likely, and the one thing he couldn't bear.

"Your anniversary, of course!" Foggy's hand struck his forehead with a quiet _smack._ "Here I am gabbing away about my mom's cooking when I'm sure you've got a fancy dinner of your own to get to!"

"No, nothing like that." At least that wasn't another lie. "Besides, I've...enjoyed talking with you." If Foggy could have read his heartbeat, it would have been rock steady.

"Me too, man!" Foggy gave him a playful jab on the shoulder. "Feel free to stop by any time, even when you're not in trouble."

Matt gave him a wave and a small smile before departing, roses clutched to his chest. Rounding the corner, he indulged himself for a moment in contemplating the sprig of lilac and the strange, bright potential it represented.


	3. Forget-Me-Nots

The last flowers he would ever steal from Foggy were forget-me-nots. Delicate, huddled together in small bunches, their light scent mingling with the rain misting down. Nowhere near as grand as the roses Foggy had given him, but then Foggy wasn't there.

Matt hadn't wanted to take any of them - even though he was sure Foggy wouldn't mind, it still felt wrong. In the end, only the small bunch of forget-me-nots seemed innocuous enough to merit fewer than a hundred Hail Marys.

He couldn't even hide behind the facade of an occasion. There was no holiday or anniversary that Sunday, a month after the last. He simply missed his father. Not the dull ache that came and went, always lodged just below his ribs, but a sharper, fresher pain. The kind that came when old wounds were ripped open.

Hector Rodriguez had been only 33 when a fall from a construction site had taken him away from his wife and young son. They two of them were barely there in Matt's office, a pair of ghosts in folding chairs. Though his business was with Maria, it was Antonio who haunted him.

Matt scrounged up a business card and stuck it in the gate; he couldn't bear Foggy thinking someone else had been responsible. The thin card stock was already growing damp with the rain, but hopefully it would stay legible long enough to do the job.

As Matt turned and walked the few blocks to the churchyard, his hair, always in need of a trim, clung to his forehead; shoving it back sent a fresh trickle of water across cheeks. His mental fog had driven any thought of an umbrella from his mind, but it hardly mattered. The damp suited his mood. His cane, too, had been left behind, but these were streets he knew all too well.

When he arrived, the churchyard was silent, still; it was a small plot, never occupied by more than a handful of mourners, but even those had been chased away by the weather. The granite of the headstones was smooth beneath his fingers, dirt and age temporarily forgotten. Jack Murdock's lay in the corner, under a poplar tree.

Matt knelt, the soaked soil shifting as if to welcome him. "Hi, Dad." His voice sounded impossibly loud against the stillness. "These are for you."

He leaned the forget-me-nots against the headstone, idly arranging and rearranging them as he spoke. "I hope they're okay. Guy who grows them is a friend of mine."

His laugh was sudden, too loud. "Can't think why he likes me, really. All I do is show up and steal his flowers. And lie about who they're for." His stomach clenched at the thought of it. "The nicest, most genuine human being I've talked to in a long time, and I tell him lie after lie. All because I can't take his pity. Hardly the Murdock fighting spirit, is it?"

Only silence. A wild, illogical part of him always longed for a response; for the thousandth time, there was only the wind. No, that wasn't quite true. The creaking of leather behind him told a different story.

Matt whirled around. "Hello?" Who was there? Why weren't they saying anything?

A deep breath from the visitor, and then, "The first thing to say is, 'I'm sorry.' Like, really sorry. You know when you're a kid and you break your mom's favorite vase? Like that level of sorry."

Matt knew that voice at once, but what he knew didn't make any sense. "Foggy? Why are you-"

"Following you?" Foggy's voice was tight, a little panicked. "Eavesdropping? Trying to slink away before you noticed me?"

"...here?" Matt finished finally. His mind was racing, calculating. How long had Foggy been standing there? How much had he _heard_?

"I didn't mean to be here!" Foggy drew a little closer, then stopped. "I mean, I _did_ , but not _here_ here _-_ you know? You don't. I'm going to start over."

Matt nodded mutely. His knees ached, but he didn't dare move. Something told him he might want to be sitting down for this anyway.

"Okay, here we go: I was coming down the street when I saw you take the flowers. And you looked, well, _sad_ , man! I was worried about you! Maybe it was none of my business, looking back _definitely_ none of my business, but I followed you. Like a crazy person."

"I just wanted to catch you up, tell you not to worry about the flowers - forget-me-nots grow like weeds, I promise - but then...you were here. And you _were_ sad. By the time it occurred to me that this was _super not okay,_ well, we were having this conversation. Once again, really, really sorry. I should probably go."

"Don't." For no reason he could articulate, the only thing worse than Foggy having heard everything was Foggy leaving. "I...want you to stay."

There were a few moments of stillness, then the squeak of shoe leather growing louder. Beneath him, the soil moved to accommodate Foggy settling beside him. "What was he like - your dad?"

"Tough," Matt said after a moment. "He could take a beating like nobody else. Guess he had a lot of practice. Battlin' Jack Murdock, that's what they called him in the ring."

"But at home...he was kind; protective; determined I wasn't going to get beat up for a living like he was. Even after the accident, he never let me use it as an excuse. After he was gone..." Matt couldn't bring himself to finish.

Foggy's hand was a shock of warmth on his shoulder. "I'm sure he'd be proud of what you've accomplished."

Matt closed his eyes; the primal part of him wanted to crawl into that warmth and stay there. "Days like this I wonder what I _have_ accomplished. Even with the occasional lucky victory, reaching anyone who can make a difference seems no closer than before.

"Well, call me crazy - which, after today, you probably should - but if you're looking for a mood lifter, sitting in a graveyard, asking for pneumonia is not going to do it."

Matt shivered; Foggy was right. He'd been too lost in his own head to notice how thoroughly the rain had soaked him through.

The hand on his shoulder squeezed gently. "Why don't you come back to my place and dry off? I make a mean cup of herbal tea." Foggy's voice was warm, inviting; it held none of the pity Matt had been dreading to hear.

"Yes, I..." Matt swallowed, strangely nervous. "I think I'd like that." Foggy rose first, offering an arm to help Matt to his feet. He took it with a wince, knees nearly locking under him in protest.

Foggy wrapped an arm around his waist with a laugh. "Easy there. Don't need to give you a sprained ankle on top of the pneumonia. You got it?"

Matt nodded gratefully, then remembered. "My cane's back in my apartment...would you mind?" He didn't fully trust his knees not to send him flying. Ordinarily, it would have galled him to ask, but Foggy was proving the exception to a lot of his rules.

Foggy slid his arm beneath Matt's hand. "It would be an honor, monsieur. If you would care to walk this way?"

Matt let Foggy lead him back toward his place, let him pepper him with questions about the legal aid office where he worked. It was only when the fragrance of mingled blossoms announced their proximity to Foggy's place that his companion lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

After a little while, he spoke again. "Hey, can I, um, ask you something? It's personal." Foggy was close enough for Matt to hear his racing heartbeat with little effort.

Matt was surprised to find his own heartbeat speeding up to keep pace with Foggy's. "Sure, Foggy. Seems the least I owe you is some answers."

"If all this time the flowers were for your father...does that mean you don't have a boyfriend?" Matt would have given anything to be able to see Foggy's face at that moment.

As it was, he had to rely on his gut. He stopped walking and placed a hand on Foggy's chest. "That's right. Single as they come."

"Well, in that case..." The thudding of their joint heartbeats filled Matt's ears. "Consider this my application for the position."

Foggy placed his hands gingerly on Matt's waist and leaned forward, his lips centimeters away. Matt smiled. Foggy was giving him one last chance to say no.

With the scent of lilacs and roses filling his head with sweetness, Matt leaned into Foggy's lips. They were sweet, too, and tasted of rain. His body leaned instinctively into Foggy's, searching for the warmth the rain had stolen.

They kissed like that, surrounded by flowers, enveloped by mist, until Foggy exclaimed suddenly, "God, I'm an idiot! Worrying about you getting pneumonia one minute and keeping you out in the damp the next."

"Well, I'm certainly not complaining." Matt ran a self-conscious hand over his lips, still tingling from the kiss. He started to grin and found it was hard to stop.

"Still, I'd feel better with you inside, wrapped in a blanket and drinking some tea." Foggy grabbed his hand and began to lead him toward the house.

"Only if you make me one promise," Matt called out, following Foggy to the comparative dryness of the front door. Foggy's footsteps stopped.

"No herbal tea. Give me a good, strong, Irish breakfast so my father won't have to hop out of his grave and strangle me." Foggy's surprised laugh had Matt grinning so hard it hurt.

"I think I can do that." Foggy's key clicked in the lock. "But only if you promise me something in return."

"No proper lawyer would ever promise anything without knowing the conditions," Matt pointed out, though he had a sneaking suspicion that with Foggy involved, his better lawyering instincts were headed out the window.

"Well, you're going to have to be an improper lawyer if you want that tea." Foggy insisted. The knot of Matt's tie was slowly loosened, the tie itself slung over his shoulder.

"All right," Matt responded impulsively, "I promise. Now will you be telling me what I've just agreed to?"

"Simple." Foggy leaned near enough for Matt to feel his breath on his ear. "That if you ever want to bring me flowers, you won't steal them from anyone's garden but mine."

Matt ran his fingers along the arbor above his head until they reached one of the sweet pea blooms he'd been smelling. Deftly, he plucked it and placed it behind Foggy's hair. The last thing he said before kissing him again was, "Deal."


End file.
